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January 2, 2023
— Maciej Ceglowski returns from hiatus with the first in a series on why sending humans to Mars is a bad idea #
January 1, 2023
— he hired a historical researcher to uncover the real history of a subject he covered in 2021 #
— Sherlock Holmes, Metropolis, The Jazz Singer, Puttin’ on the Ritz, My Blue Heaven, and so much more #
December 31, 2022
— even if I never implement it, I love interactive explainers like these that explain how something’s made via Simon Willison #
— ridiculous pay-what-you-like game for Windows/Mac/Linux that’s like QWOP attempting a jewelry heist #
December 30, 2022
— Catherynne M. Valente penned a barnburner about the cycle of value extraction and destruction of popular online social platforms #
— “the dreams of the 90s are alive in the Fediverse” #
— fascinating and funny process video from the very talented Cat Graffam #
December 29, 2022
— he attributes it to the new CEO’s decision to drop paid placement deals and give more control to the stores #
— a wordless, serene 90-minute compilation of going off the grid in a Swedish forest, reminiscent of Primitive Technology‘s videos via MetaFilter #
— very entertaining video documenting a 16-year-long project to run the length of every street in Pittsburgh, over 3,600 miles #
— no screeners have leaked this awards season, unconfirmed rumors of a pirate group bust are swirling #
December 28, 2022
— The Verge rounds up reactions to their deceptive statement, including one from 1Password’s security architect #
— entertaining post explaining creative techniques for getting GPT-3 to leak its source prompts via Simon Willison #
— “Andy is a mostly dog name” via @thepuddingmail #
— building on decentralized protocols makes the network more resilient than any centralized platform #
— Zach Lieberman asked ten writers, artists, and researchers to pick one of his blob forms, then give it a name and describe it via @thepuddingmail #
— wonderful animated short where five old friends recount life growing up in Brooklyn in the 1970s #
— the early version of Mickey Mouse will be theoretically free for reuse, but still trademarked and actively policed by Disney via @textfiles #
December 23, 2022
— modular synthesizer made in the PICO-8 fantasy console #
December 22, 2022
— The Pudding’s visual explanation of how our current economic policies inevitably created massive income inequality via Kottke #
— the stories that Businessweek writers wished they’d written, a roundup of some of the year’s best journalism #
December 20, 2022
— instead of blocking online distractions, this Chrome add-on only blocks websites that help you get work done via b3ta #
December 19, 2022
— he donated all his lyrics/music in 2020, but at age 94, just added all recording/performing rights via @emollick #
December 16, 2022
— “Twitter is currently doing to one man’s psyche what it has done to countless societies around the world” #
December 15, 2022
— links in tweets, DMs, and profiles are all now blocked, and clicking links in existing tweets are blocked for being “unsafe” #
— reporters from NYT, WaPo, CNN, Mashable, and The Intercept, plus Aaron Rupar, Keith Olbermann, and the official Mastodon account #
— from Bengaluru to Tokyo, pictorial reporting on how eight major tech districts fared during the pandemic via Nick Heer #
— the ArtStation homepage has looked like this for days #
— 26-hour, 1,000-song album of “AI emo” trained with permission on a post-hardcore emo band’s discography #
— “I still long to have no phone at all… My parents are so addicted. My mom got on Twitter, and I’ve seen it tear her apart.” #
— from the excellent Brr.fyi, a Bay Area IT contractor blogging about life in Antarctica #
— hacking an Arduino and Raspberry Pi into a Brother AX-325 to make a typewriter that replies to you #
— props to the foley artist on this via Instagram #
— I loved “A Dark Quiet Death” more than the rest of the series, so excited to hear this #
— open-source AI music generator powered by fine-tuning Stable Diffusion on spectrogram images via Hacker News #
December 14, 2022
— infinitely-recursive Game of Life via Nelson Minar #
December 13, 2022
— reminiscent of Yule Log 2.0, an annual project where artists animated a yule log for a looping website #
— great conversation about ownership and moderation, contrasting Automattic’s thoughtful approach vs. the Twitter garbage fire #
— growing collection of absurd, but real, gender form fields #
December 12, 2022
— Jer Thorp’s challenging new daily word game, built around a letter tumbling mechanic #
December 9, 2022
— outstanding free VVVVVV-esque game that controls like Snake via terrysfreegameoftheweek.com #
— Peter Dibble does a thorough deep dive into a quirky holiday tradition I’ve never heard of #
— this feels like it’s ripped from the pages of Incredible Doom #
— launched in 2021, a new-to-me project indexing 25 million research documents from the 18th century to today #
December 7, 2022
— Robin Sloan pens a call to arms for online experimentation and invention in 2023 #
— ballpark estimate of monthly active users over time #
December 6, 2022
— the first day of this year’s Confounding Calendar, an advent calendar of tiny puzzle games #
— one of the most complex games ever made is more approachable, without sacrificing depth or difficulty #
— hallucinating fake virtual machines inside fake virtual machines on fictional internets #
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